Calamity Physics
by Beguile
Summary: "Damn it, Matt! Stop saying crazy things because of drugs!" Or: why Matt's heightened senses and prescription painkillers don't mix.


Disclaimer: the characters and concepts in this story are the property of Marvel and their related affiliates. This is an amateur writing effort meant for entertainment purposes only.

Summary: "Damn it, Matt! Stop saying crazy things because of drugs!"

Or: why Matt's heightened senses and prescription painkillers don't mix.

Spoilers: blink-and-you'll-miss-them spoilers for "Speak of the Devil". Post-season one.

Author's Notes: I just sat down, started writing, and this happened. Readers, please enjoy!

* * *

Calamity Physics

If there was an accurate metaphor, it would be this: Matt's brain becomes an entire gallery of expressionist paintings, all of them fiery, all of them loud; each one with an odour thick enough to taste and a taste thick enough to suffocate. And don't get Matt started on tactility, because most of the pieces in his own personal hell are all made out of sandpaper or shrapnel.

(Hospital grade linens are especially bad. Meat grinders, every last one of them.)

But that only covered the basics of it, because – and Matt takes some liberties here; he only went to one art gallery when he had his sight – as far as he remembers, a person can choose to focus on one painting at a time. They can single out "Smattering of Red" or "Blobs of Green" or "[Insert Pretentious Title Here]" -

(he went _once_ – singular – and it's hard to develop a knowledge let alone an appreciation of art when he can't experience it)

\- and that person can stand for hours in admiration and study. Normally, Matt's brain is able to take that stand. He can build paintings in his mind of single rooms or spaces. He can filter out heartbeats, bad breath, conversations, sewer gases or any other elements of the daily grind as well as he can hone in and focus on them.

But when his brain's on prescription painkillers – narcos or benzos or whatever other chemical tomfoolery the healthcare industry has developed for those with five average senses – he's forced to endure every inch of the art gallery all at once. No focus. No filter. Just Matt Murdock in a sea of fire and sharp objects.

And that's just when he's alone in the room. When people come in, they register in flashes, in particles, like he's caught in the Hadron Collider and his whole existence is just calamity physics.

Which is truer and probably more accurate than the whole 'world on fire' analogy.

Not to mention the art gallery thing.

"You know what, Foggy? Karen? Forget I said anything," he scrubs at the sandpaper covering his thighs to drown the hearts-beating, ragged-breathing, monitor-beeping, wheel-squeaking, people-chatter cacophony thundering all around him to no avail. "You just…you asked how I was doing, and you wanted me to be as honest as possible."

Foggy's heartbeat stops its worry dance and enters into that jovial rhythm that Matt recognizes. He's okay. Things are okay. As if he can hear him, Foggy joins in, "O-kay! Let's get you home, huh? What do you say?"

Matt's answer – a mumble – is overwhelmed by the sharp sting at his wrist as he raises his hands to his ears. There's a man with a gunshot wound being wheeled into the ER and a woman in labour three floors up and two children with whooping cough and an elderly couple saying goodbye to one another in the room upstairs (which is a good thing: she smells so close to death) and everybody is doing something but none of it seems to be helping and he keeps breathing, keeps breathing, keeps breathing until the drugs calm him down again.

Foggy helps too. His friend is so close that Matt can hear his skin cells dividing. Matt lowers his hands slowly back to the bed of needles he's sitting on, stabilizing his remaining senses in the room.

(A hospital room if the smells _and tastes_ of ammonia and saline and sweat are to be believed.)

Matt gags. Nearly vomits, but he's already puked. His stomach is empty. He forces himself to answer the question he was asked and not the thousand echoing from the emergency room. "Yes, home. Take me home."

Home isn't so suffocating. Home doesn't hurt so much.

Another heartbeat emerges through a sliding door. The smell of peppermint is welcome and then overwhelming. Matt retches. He gets a basin for the effort, and he holds his face inside the rim for a few seconds of respite from the wide, wild world.

Karen tries to be quiet, but she's too close to be quiet in his ears. "Maybe we should leave him here, Foggy."  
"He's already signed his AMA, Karen."

And there's something else too, something Foggy isn't saying. Matt lifts his head from the basin and spirals, spins – CHRIST. He drives a hand into the needles of his mattress and still ends up falling backwards.

Foggy catches him, "Whoa, there."

"Your arms feel like pillows…" he could fall asleep right here. Almost does, actually, but Foggy deposits him back onto needles and granite.

"Ummm…thanks. Your arms feel like lead. Uh, yeah, don't lean on that one," Foggy moves him. Matt doesn't feel it. He's too caught up with the sound of a bone saw from the morgue and Peppermint Hand Cream pinching his arm till it's nothing but a loud hurt.

"Are you sure you want to go home, Mr. Murdock?"

He nods just to feel the room spin some more. Laughs because it's kind of becoming a pleasant ride. "Yes, I want to go home."

"Is this normal?" Karen asks.

Her voice is so soothing. He tells her as much, and her heart flutters. "Thanks, Matt."

"Karen," Foggy asserts himself, "Nurse Lundergen, please forgive my friend's ramblings."

"I'm not rambling. The nurses downstairs – they're rambling. About patients. Very unprofessional…"

"You can hear the nurses downstairs?"

Matt is about to respond to Karen but Foggy booms, "Obviously, he can't hear the nurses downstairs."

"I can recite what they're saying, if you like."

"She would not like that."

"You say no, her respiration says yes. Speaking of respiration, your respiration's picking up," he searches the room, lost all of a sudden. "I'm doing something wrong. What am I doing wrong?"

"I'll bring you a wheelchair," Nurse Lundergen notes on her way out the door. Her scent hangs on the tip of Matt's tongue. He spits a little to get rid of it.

Foggy dabs his face with a bit of sheet metal. "You're not doing anything wrong, Matt," he says.

"Then why does it feel like I'm floating out to sea?"

"Or wandering around an art gallery?" Karen offers. Matt tries to remember saying that out loud and can't. "You were in a car accident, Matt."

He taps Foggy's arm with the hand he can't feel. "You let me drive?"

Foggy's eye roll grates against Matt's ears. "No, you were hit. By a couple of teenagers out for a spin who took a corner without looking."

Matt tries to whisper and suspects that he doesn't from Karen's reaction, "Is this a line, Foggy? Did we make this up?"

"No, _Matthew_ ," irritation makes Foggy's voice tight, "You actually got hit by a car. You're fine, mostly. You're going to have that cast on your arm for a while."

"You're lucky you weren't killed," Karen adds.

The accident comes back to him. "Luck has nothing to do with it. They did swerve to compensate."

"How do you know that?"

"I could feel it. The sudden breath of wind from the change in direction. The screeching tires on asphalt. Foggy, explain the world on fire thing to her."

Foggy laughs uneasily, "Oh, yeah, the world on fire thing. Yeah, we'll get to that."

They're not going to, not if Foggy's heart rate is any indication. Matt takes the liberty of filling Karen in, "I have incredibly heightened senses, Karen. You know, aside for my vision."

Her heart does a different kind of flutter, the kind an actress's might before she steps on stage. "Oh, really? Incredibly heightened senses?"

Matt nods and rides the spin again, smiling, "I also know parkour."

"Parkour! Right!" Karen is nodding up a storm. He can hear her chin cutting through the air. "That's great!"

"And do you want to know something else, Karen?"

Foggy cuts him off. "Where is that nurse with the wheelchair? Karen, would you mind going to find her?" The door wafts open, carrying with it a wave of minty freshness. "Oh, thank God! She's back! Come on, Matty. We are homeward bound."

"Home…where the real bed is…" Matt uses the arm he can feel to push himself into a sitting position and is very grateful that Foggy's pillowy arms don't let him pitch forward. He would pass straight through the floor and into the circle of gossiping nurses and that would be more unpleasant than his sudden awareness of alarms from elsewhere. The old woman, perhaps?

"Someone's dying," he comments in the direction of peppermint hand cream. Nurse Lundergen doesn't seem all that concerned.

"Not you, Mister Murdock," she reassures him.

"No, not me. I didn't die," he hisses when his feet hit the icy floor. "Ah, geez, that stings…"

Karen's panic fills the whole room with more alarms. Matt struggles to protect himself from the onslaught and ends up free floating somewhere in the emergency room. "Your arm?" she asks.

Matt forgets the question almost as soon as it's asked. He's so uncomfortable, standing there in sandpaper, feet frozen in place. Not even Foggy's body heat, which tends to run a degree above average, comes as a comfort, and Foggy's presence is suffocatingly close in Matt's mental prison. He rubs then itches and then starts tearing, and would succeed too if Foggy wasn't right there.

"We'll get you some of your stuff when we get home," Foggy's voice is barely more than a whisper but it drowns out the ocean of awful noises coming from every other direction. His touch guides Matt back to the room, back to his own uncomfortable body.

"Don't let go of me. Don't let me float away again," Matt finally feels a bit of his focus coming back to him. "You're just so much more real, Foggy, than all that other stuff out there."

"That's because I am awesome," Foggy removes his hand just long enough to take his coat off and drape it over Matt's shoulders. The silk interior hits his skin and he melts into it. Foggy clamps an arm behind his back when his knees buckle. "I never let my friends down."

Karen's hands are soft and tender as they guide his arms into the sleeves of Foggy's coat. The one he can't feel hurts for a second and then goes back to being numb. Matt breathes his first real sigh of relief since waking up in the fire and is only too happy to have his friends draw him slowly through the waters of hospital mayhem to the sticky plastic seat of the wheelchair. He wants to rest his head but ends up just letting it fall back, back, back…

"Careful!" Karen's hand catches him and holds him as Foggy, he thinks, starts to push. She straightens his hair across his head and – with her heart sufficiently racing – even massages his scalp a little bit. Matt doesn't want to moan, but he's gone from one sensory overload to another. This is just what he needs to stay tethered to his own thoughts.

"Thank you, Karen. You have…you have no idea. Thank you."

"You're welcome. Can't let those…heightened senses of yours get carried away now, can we?"

He shakes his head, let's his eyes close, let's himself drift into the flutter of her heartbeat and the steadiness of Foggy's breathing. "How long before…whatever they gave me wears off?"

"You got a couple more hours of that, Mr. Murdock," Nurse Lundergen says. He forgot she was there from how normal the smell of peppermint has become. "Best for you to just sleep it off. The doctor's written up a prescription for something to take the edge off while you're home."

"I don't want it."

She laughs, "You will once you can feel your arm again."

He looks for support where he knows he'll find it. "Please don't let them drug me again, Foggy. Please: I can't be off the street again. I can't…I already lost so much time because of Nobu…"

Foggy flips out, "Damn it, Matt! Stop saying crazy things because of drugs!"

Matt's head splits in two painful halves from the volume. "Nice save, Foggy."

"I'm sorry," Foggy really is sorry. His heart is really sorry. His hands are really sorry. His footsteps are very, very sorry. And very flat. Foggy has flat, sorry feet. Karen giggles suddenly as if she can hear his inner monologue. Which she can, because Matt is saying it all out loud.

Foggy is not impressed, "And stop saying everything you think out loud unless it's about other people."

"Sorry. I don't even realize I'm doing it."

"I know, buddy. I know. We'll get you home where it's totally fine for you to say embarrassing things about me. And for you to get some sleep."

The noise is starting to pick up again. Not even Karen can block it out. Matt raises his hands to the side of his head and holds them tight. One is made out of solid rock and doesn't block out noise properly. Also, it hurts to have pressure applied to it. The bones grind inside in a way they're not supposed to. Matt pushes and releases, pushes and releases, listening to the wear and tear of his own body inside his all too fragile flesh. "The surgeon did a good job," he comments.

"Stop messing with it," Foggy pushes his rock hand back onto the arm rest.

At the same time, the sliding doors open to a sunny, warm New York, and Matt stops fighting the sensory onslaught and joins it. He joins the millions of New Yorkers in their screeching, clanging blether. Then he's sandwiched between Karen and Foggy, and Karen's shoulders are too bony – no offence, Karen: they are – so he leans into Foggy, Goose to his Maverick, the two of them avocadoes at law – oh, my gosh, he pronounced it avocadoes too! – and the high really stops being scary after that. Matt isn't alone in the ocean anymore. He's taking deep breaths of New York air, tasting hot dogs from four blocks away along with tar and construction and human bodies – some washed, some unwashed, and stop saying that's cannibalistic, Foggy.

Then home. Where the air is just the right temperature and smells like air ought to smell. Matt drops his arms and lets Foggy's coat slide off his shoulders. He shakes it free from the bulk of his cast and would keep shaking to get the cast free if Foggy doesn't stop him. That's when the chafing of the hospital gown registers, and it just has to go anywhere else but on him.

Karen's heart breaks the sound barrier; her temperature goes up several degrees. Foggy's either trying not to laugh or not to scream. "I love you so much, you know that?" Matt asks, letting home wash away the discomfort of all that hospital awfulness. "Both of you. So much."

Foggy chokes on a laugh, gives him the worst hug ever, and ushers him into the bedroom. He's wrapped up in silk as the world spins comfortingly around him. "We love you too, Matty. Now, get some sleep."

So he does.

* * *

The art gallery stretches out around him, but Matt is finally able to stand and appreciate one work. His pillow, his blanket, his room…followed very slowly by his dry mouth, his splitting headache, his throbbing wrist, and his nakedness.

"Why am I naked?"

"Because you just cannot keep your clothes on around me," Foggy shifts in the chair he's pulled over to keep watch. "Also, you have a major hate-on for hospital gowns, sheets, mattresses…just hospitals in general."

Matt swallows hard. He's sore, stiff, aching, but his wrist is the only major injury and it sounds to be healing just fine. "What happened?"

"You actually got hit by a car. Hurt your wrist when you landed on the pavement. Should I give you a metaphor? You gave Karen and me several yesterday. Along with several explicit hints about your secret identity."

Matt groans, "Does Karen know?"

Foggy laughs lightly, "She knows that you cannot handle your opioids."

"Oh, my God…"

"She also knows what you look like naked."

He covers his face with the blanket. "Kill me now."

"And miss your mortifying reunion upon returning to the office? No. No, I am already too excited for that, Matt Murdock."

The blankets feel really nice around his head. They muffle the sounds of the world outside his apartment from all the other paintings he's not ready to build yet.

Foggy understands, gives him a few minutes, then adds, "There's some pills for your wrist on the table." Before Matt has a chance to speak, Foggy adds, "They're just aspirin. To take the edge off. Then we'll get you some breakfast."

Matt slowly pulls the blankets down from his face. Rejoins the world. "Thank you, Foggy."

Foggy pats him on the shoulder as he rises, "You're welcome."

He walks slowly towards the kitchen. Weirdly, he stops near the couch, then doubles back towards the bedroom, "By the way, are you comfortable? Or do you need me to encircle you with my pillowy arms?"

Matt throws a pillow at him instead.

* * *

Happy reading!


End file.
